Area Students Talk Success at State Automotive Repair Competition

(KNSI) – Area students are crediting the St. Cloud Technical and Community College Discovery Academy program with helping them succeed at a state competition.

The contingent was led by Rylen Groth of Sartell, who finished third in the automotive SkillsUSA Minnesota contest. He talks about what it is like to work in “the shop.”

“It gives you a view of how a regular shop will work because we usually get a teacher’s vehicle or a customer’s vehicle. They’ll tell us the problem and then we’ll find the problem, fix it, and then we’ll give them a parts order, and they’ll pay for the parts.”

Groth is most comfortable working on the physical parts of a vehicle, such as engine components and brakes. The trickiest jobs involve electrical wiring. Once he graduates college, Groth intends to be a diesel technician, working on commercial trucks.

Kian Grabinski, another student at the competition, is also from Sartell. He talked with KNSI News about the different facets of the competition.

“I started with figuring out [a] bad wiper issue and then moved forward to timing an engine, doing research on the computer. We did an interview with one of their judges. He interviewed us like a job interview. And then we took a paper test.”

The Discovery Academy automotive classes meet at St. Cloud Apollo High School. Grabinski says he first got interested in automotive repair by helping older friends customize their own cars. He is enrolled at St. Cloud Technical and Community College for the fall.

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